NB:
This is a Lambda print on C-type photographic paper. All our prints come with a certificate signed by the artist and a unique edition number. The prints are produced with a white border around the photograph to allow for framing. We also have included some cotton gloves to protect the print during handling.

Under the bright colourful surface of Jan Dunning's photographs there lurks a dark and rather wicked humour. A shiny disco ball spilling out dazzling fairy lights into an airy room is compromised by the shark like thorns, embedded into the dance floor. Poppies dancing in the breeze as the sun streams through the window suddenly take on a triffid like quality as they climb towards the ceiling making the space claustrophobic and uncomfortable. A green undergrowth of leaves and stems burst their way through the floor bringing uncontrolled nature into the calm of the manmade interior.

Jan has a deep interest in the narratives of myth and legend and she brings the same transformative story telling to her image making. It is no accident that she chooses to use a pinhole camera to make these works. The dreamy and ethereal quality of pinhole photography is a perfect expression of Jan's personal fairy tales.

Using her own memories and daydreams as inspiration, Jan starts making her art by constructing intricate table top models and sets. Working intuitively, responding to ideas as they come to her, she slowly builds a space, playing with creating windows and light wells, experimenting with paint and coloured wall paper until she is happy with the room.

Built just to be photographed these domestic spaces must fulfil a visual potential and it isn't until she has taken the photograph that she can assess the success of her fictional spaces.

With no intention of fooling the viewer Jan makes it clear that these spaces can't be real. Rather she plays with ideas inherent in magical realism where the tension between fiction and reality creates the intrigue and is the very basis of the attraction of this style of work.